How do I stop taking my startup's setbacks personally?

When you build a company from nothing, it stops feeling like something you own and starts feeling like something you are. So a bad month does not read as a business problem. It reads as proof that you are failing. That blurring is common in founders, and it is also quietly dangerous. You are not your company. You are the person building it. That difference matters, because a setback in the business is information, not a verdict on your worth. The best founders read a bad result the way a captain reads weather. It tells them what to adjust, not who they are. Start putting a small gap between yourself and the work. At the end of each day, name one thing that happened in the company and one thing that is true about you as a person. Keep them separate. The company will have good days and bad ones. Your worth does not swing with the numbers.